Firstly, before I go on a rant about the relationship between Grendel and the Allegory, I'd like to take a moment and explain my take away from this capturing story. I came to a conclusion, more so an hypothesis that Plato was trying to emphasize man's ability to make his own realty based on a hero's journey. None the less, everything at the start of one's life is a blurry, more so, incomprehensible jumble of thoughts. This is merely because one does not acquire the knowledge to grab the true meaning of an object, rather, they have not developed their own perceptions to transform a blur into reality. An individual must live life as a journey to find existence and reveal their capabilities of object permanence and internal investigation (why am I here? what is my duty upon earth? Am I to jump the bandwagon or make life for myself? Who is my creator, perhaps a higher being?) Furthermore, being isolated or "chained" (as stated in Plato's allegory), hinder the release of perspective- is life outside the real? What is reality? Now in reference to Grendel, this reality, or truth is the disbelief in a higher being, that is, one makes a world for him self. In fact, Grendel even states: "I create this universe blink by blink." By this, it can be inferred he views reality not based on the stereotypical views of the world around him, but on how you frame the world and predict it to be- the way you live it. Again in relation to Plato's allegory, I feel like Grendel is represented as the prisoner who is stuck in the cave and because the prisoner are "chained," there is emphasis on isolation (exactly what Grendel is facing at this point). Note that Grendel suffers from this isolation, he is envious of the men (seen in chapter 4 and 5) that have reliance and dependence from another, a source of love (which his mother fails to provide him with). I also think that Grendel is reaching a point of enlightenment as he ascends into the real world- this action gives him a sense of "awareness." The shadow and the cave imagery are highly used in order to extrapolate on the action of capture. He become en-lighted when he realized that he is a life, he is not part of anyone. This sense of realization occurs when his mother blinded him and hugged him (almost smashing him toward her bossom...she smelled like a pig). Note here that Grendel puts his mother in the animistic realm, different from his human like perception. And another interesting fact is that Grendel can not go back to his mother and tell her about his interaction with the outside world- now a real sense of divergence. Fundamentally, Plato's allegory and Grendel form a question of enlightenment- whether it is evil or good? Positive or negative? Is the decent back down, even worth it?
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